The daily Progressive Breakfast serves up what progressive movement members need to know to start their day.
Dem Leaders Meet Today To Merge Health Care Bills
WH, House and Senate leaders to meet on health care today. Politico reviews House strategy to strengthen bill: "Democrats in the House are expected to push for increased subsidies for the lowest-income Americans who don't qualify for Medicaid ... [they] also suggested they would push for a blend of new taxes to help pay for the subsidies and new programs created by the bill. That could include a tax on high-end insurance plans at a higher threshold organized labor could accept along with a tax on the wealthiest Americans ... House leaders also want the Senate to adopt a national insurance exchange, instead of the state-by-state exchanges established under the Senate bill, and add tougher mandates for employers and individuals ... Energy and Commerce Committee Chairman Henry Waxman (D-Calif.) wants to squeeze more money from drugmakers by reimbursing them at a lower rate for seniors who qualify for both Medicare and Medicaid..."
Congresspeople tell Bloomberg public option is unlikely be in the final bill: "U.S. Democrats will likely drop the idea of setting up a new government-run insurance program as they try to quickly resolve differences between House and Senate health-care bills, party members in both chambers said."
Politico also posts 11-page House committee analysis of House-Senate legislative differences.
HCAN launches Finish Reform Right to press negotiators to scrap insurance tax on middle-class and retain public option.
Jon Walker lays out the best way to merge the House and Senate bills.
In These Times' Art Levine compares tax on high-premium insurance plans to right-wing supply-side tax policy: "Has this become the 'voodoo economics' of so-called pragmatic moderates and Administration economists? Like supply side economics, this could be a chimerical tax policy that, they believe, will magically rein in costs and pay for all health care reform without significantly cutting back on vital services for working families or raising their out-of-pocket costs."
OurFuture.org's Richard Eskow flags the latest poll showing insurance tax is unpopular while taxing the wealthiest to pay for reform remains popular.
Ezra Klein puts "sweetheart deals" in perspective: "What you're seeing in a lot of these last-minute giveaways are good policies that shouldn't be used as special-interest bribes. Fully funding Nebraska's Medicaid expansion isn't bad because it's a fully-funded Medicaid expansion, it's bad because it's limited to Nebraska. So too with the employer mandate for the construction industry. Construction industry unions say that they need this: Otherwise, firms that don't offer insurance will have lower labor costs, and thus a competitive advantage, over firms that do. That's true, of course, for every industry where the labor doesn't have the power to demand health-care benefits. The answer isn't to give construction workers a small employer mandate but to add an employer mandate into the bill."
Medicare subsidies to private insurance help fuel continued rise in health care spending. Bloomberg: "Federal spending on medical programs grew almost twice as fast as the total spent on health care in the U.S. in 2008, a pattern aided by Medicare subsidies to private insurers ... More seniors also shifted from the traditional Medicare plan to Medicare Advantage programs offered through private insurers, the report said ... the government spends more on average for the Advantage plans ..."
Total health care spending continues to outpace GDP. GoozNews breaks it down: "The latest national health care expenditures report from the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services shows health care spending in the U.S. rose in 2008 at its slowest pace in nearly 50 years. But don't break out the champagne quite yet. The slowdown was fed by a million people being dumped from insurance rolls as unemployment skyrocketed. The most important fact about last year's 4.4 percent growth in health care spending (down from 6.0 percent in 2007) was that it still outpaced overall economic growth by a nearly two-to-one margin. Health care in 2008 reached a staggering 16.2 percent of gross domestic product, up from 15.9 percent a year earlier and 13.6 percent in 2000. The fact that employers cut workers (and therefore health coverage) didn't mean people stopped getting sick. So health care spending by households grew 4.3 percent last year."
Fiscal Experts Demand W. Post Meeting Over Fiscal Times Scandal
OurFuture.org's Roger Hickey announces stepped up pressure on W. Post: "[Yesterday,] 21 policy experts sent a letter (below) to Washington Post Board Chairman Donald Graham, requesting a meeting. Why? Because we've gotten no response to our protest letter to The Washington Post's ombudsman ... while The Fiscal Times article focused on the Peterson-promoted Conrad-Gregg budget commission—and quoted several Peterson-supported 'experts'—it ignored the views of those who oppose that approach to the deficit, including a coaltion of 40 groups representing workers, women, seniors and others."
Columbia Journalism Reviews' Trudy Lieberman reviews the W. Post's ethics: "... the Post slipped on this one, and its lack of full disclosure and partnership with Peterson’s group prompted last weekend’s e-mail traffic ... He who pays the piper calls the tune, and there are lots of payers funding content for the entire paper. But when a news service supplies specific content on narrow topics, or a philanthropic organization funds a single magazine writer to cover a topic near and dear to its mission, one payer can more easily call the tune."
The Nation's William Greider looks at the quality of The Fiscal Times reporting: "So why do the TFT reporters (Elaine Povich and Eric Pianin) zero in on old folks and Social Security or entitlements like Medicare and Medicaid? Because those are Pete Peterson's favorite targets. He has flogged Social Security as a blight on our future for at least twenty years. He is a nut on the subject. His 'facts' are wildly distorted or simply not true. Never mind, the establishment press portrays him as a disinterested statesman."
Dean Baker pronounces W. Post's credibility "R.I.P": "While selling access to reporters is a certainly a high crime for a serious newspaper, handing over a portion of the news section to an advocacy group is arguably a worse sin. The Fiscal Times piece was indistinguishable in its appearance from any other news story in the Washington Post. Only those careful to read the byline or the note at the bottom of the page would realize that the article was not a regular news story. Nowhere is the Fiscal Times identified as being affiliated with, and funded by, the Peter Peterson Foundation."
Digby warns W. Post this won't save the journalism business: "I know the journalism business is tough these days. But they aren't going to solve their problems by selling their news pages to biased organizations and calling it journalism. (On the other hand, if what they want is to protect their personal wealth from all but the most token taxation, then maybe this makes a little bit more sense...)"
Senate Conservatives Look To Defang Consumer Financial Protection Agency
HuffPost's Ryan Grim reports Senate conservatives working to make proposed consumer agency "subservient": "'From the Republican point of view, the idea of a separate agency is still anathema,' said Sen. Robert Bennett of Utah, a senior Republican on the banking committee. An independent agency, he said, can go too far in the direction of tight regulation without taking into account the effect of the rules it creates on business and the economy. He said he's seen it happen before. 'Can you say EPA?' he asked, lifting his eyebrows. The Republican Party has regretted for years that President Richard Nixon made the EPA independent. ... Republicans who once pushed for total elimination of the CFPA are now ready to back a compromise solution that would make the CFPA subservient to a larger financial regulatory agency, whose leadership could modify or eliminate any protections deemed hurtful to business."
Politico reports bipartisan Senate effort to bring back Glass-Steagall: "The anger at the nation’s financial behemoths is taking shape in a variety of ways, most notably in a bill from Sens. Maria Cantwell (D-Wash.) and John McCain (R-Ariz.), who are targeting big financial institutions such as JPMorgan Chase and Citigroup. The bipartisan duo’s bill would reinstate the Depression-era law that built a wall between commercial banking and the riskier activities of investment banking."
PR Watch's Mary Bottari previews 1/19 launch of Financial Crisis Inquiry Commission: "[Chair Phil] Angelides struck just the right note, but much work lies ahead for the commission to fulfill this promise. Today, almost two years after the crash, no employee of any major American financial institution is behind bars. If the commission fails to defrock the high priests of finance to expose the deception of consumers, rampant accounting fraud and the complicity of regulators they will have betrayed the American taxpayer and failed their historic mandate of preventing the next crisis."
China Leading In Green Tech, Stalling Climate Agreement
China is poised to lead in solar power reports Green Energy Reporter: "A report released this morning by Barclays Capital’s Vishal Shah says solar development in China could significantly grow over the next decade, bolstered by a newly launched national feed-in-tariff system. The feed-in-tariffs could jump start more than eight gigawatts of solar projects over the next three years..."
TreeHugger reports US still lagging in wind power investment: "Despite the fact that $80 billion dollars was allocated towards stimulating the US renewable energy sector in last year's stimulus bill, mere millions have been directed towards wind projects. Stateside manufacturing of wind turbine parts is dismally low. And, most strikingly of all, it appears that Japanese, Chinese, and European companies are investing more vigorously in wind projects on American soil than American companies are. As a result, it seems that the US is fast losing an opportunity to become a leader in an industry that may come to define coming decades--and losing jobs and wealth in the process. A recent article by energy research analyst Shaun Randol of Global Association of Risk Professionals, a risk management firm, details the lack of domestic investment in American wind power. There are deemed to be three primary factors leading to the lending malaise on wind power: 'frozen credit lines, regulatory and legislative uncertainty, and risk aversion to new projects.'"
Meanwhile, Cape Wind hits another snag. NYT: "...the National Park Service announced Monday that Nantucket Sound was eligible for listing on the National Register of Historic Places, guaranteeing further delays for the [Cape Wind] project ... The park service decision came in response to a request from two Massachusetts Indian tribes, who said the 130 proposed wind turbines would thwart their spiritual ritual of greeting the sunrise, which requires unobstructed views across the sound, and disturb ancestral burial grounds."
Mother Jones' Kate Sheppard points finger at China for weak Copenhagen Accord: "In the weeks following the conclusion of the Copenhagen climate talks, three things have become very obvious: the Chinese were the biggest impediment to an international climate deal, the United States couldn't do much to change that, and the Europeans are not very happy about the whole situation."
Fine print on Copenhagen Accord yet to be written. The Vine excerpts ClimateWire: "The first real test of the accord comes Jan. 31, the deadline for both rich and poor countries to submit their economywide emission targets to the United Nations. If that happens as planned, the United Nations will then need to realize another item on the Copenhagen Accord to-do list: a registry to record each country's action, and a body to provide 'international consultations and analysis' that will ensure that China, India and other nations are living up to their climate commitments. Then comes the question of money. Analysts said short-term funding in the accord announced to help poor countries cope with climate impacts is fairly straightforward. Developed nations promised $30 billion over three years, and at least for 2010, much of the money already has been allocated. ... More problematic is the $100 billion in midterm financing that leaders vowed to mobilize through 2020. ... Where will the money—at least the U.S. portion—come from? How will it flow to other countries? Who decides the priorities? What role will controversial institutions like the World Bank have?"
Minnesota slaps a carbon tariff on North Dakota coal power, reports The Vine's Brad Plumer: "Officials in North Dakota have vowed to fight the move in court, arguing that the fee would 'discourage coal-powered electricity sales in favor of renewably powered electricity.' That's true, but it's not clear this is unfair to North Dakota, which, after all, has more wind resources than any state in the country."
Grist's Clark Williams-Derry knocks James Hansen's new book: "...Hansen’s other core misunderstanding: his apparent belief that his tax-and-dividend policy is immune from political compromise or troublesome loopholes: that somehow, both houses of Congress would agree to Hansen’s 'perfect' policy, without any of the compromises that Hansen believes render current cap-and-trade legislation too weak to be worthwhile. I have three responses to that: Bull-pucky, the IRS, and France ... It may not have made much news here, but the French supreme court just rejected France’s proposed carbon tax. The reason: according to Bloomberg News, '93 percent of all industrial carbon emissions in France would have avoided paying the full tax.' The French carbon tax was so riddled with loopholes that it ran counter to the principle of tax equality."
GOP Sen. Lisa Murkowski to get opportunity to pass amendment temporarily banning EPA from regulating greenhouse gases. BNET Energy Blog: "Senate leadership has agreed to allow a vote on Murkowski’s amendment to temporarily block the EPA’s regulation of GHGs ... The vote is scheduled for Jan. 20 and is part of the Senate’s consideration of a resolution to raise the federal debt limit. Murkowski’s amendment calls for a one-year moratorium on EPA regulations, except for motor vehicle standards ... Now she just needs 60 votes..."
CIA sharing intelligence assets with climate scientists to better understand global warming reports NYT.
Another Trade Win
AFL-CIO Blog praises International Trade Commission ruling against unfair Chinese steel pipe subsidies: "Nearly half of the U.S. workers who make the steel pipes for oil drilling have lost their jobs since 2008."
